Lianyungang Port
Lianyungang Port in East China’s Jiangsu province handled more than 100 million tons of freight last year, most of which was for exports.
Despite being battered by the ongoing global financial crisis, China’s shipping industry hopes to return to calmer waters by the latter half of this year.
The nation’s major ports, whose business has shrunk sharply since late last year thanks to nose-diving exports, are making the most of the central government’s RMB4 trillionstimulus package, upgrading themselves into logistics centers by building dry hubs, adding domestic shipping lines and expanding into barge, railway and road transportation.
For example, a 500,000 sq m logistics center is under construction involving a total investment of RMB1.8 billion at Shenzhen Yantian Port.
Yantian has 86 shipping lines under operation, of which 69 run to the US and Europe.
In the first half of 2008, Yantian’s container throughput fell 5.3% year-on-year, the first decline since the port opened 14 years ago, and its corporate assets and profit fell 2.2 and 13.8% year-on-year, according to the port’s financial report. Meanwhile, the port’s share price fell a staggering 171% from a high of RMB19 in January last year to a mere RMB7 in June 2008.
Yantian is by no means the exception to the rule, with all of China’s ports hit by the global financial crisis.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Transport, the cargo throughput handled by Chinese ports last November was 460 million tons, an increase of just 0.5% year-on-year, the slowest growth in the past decade, and the cargo throughput for exports even witnessed negative growth. Both cargo throughput and cargo throughput for exports enjoyed double-digit growth on a yearly basis in the first half of 2008.
China Daily said Shanghai, China’s second-largest port next to Hong Kong, saw its share price dive 190% between January and December 2008, while Tianjin, the largest port in northern China, suffered a fall of 220%.
Wu Yunying, a shipping analyst from Changjiang Securities said, ‘Ports in the southern part and coastal areas were more severely battered than the northern and inland regions.’
He predicted that considering the ongoing economic woes of the US and the EU, Chinese ports ‘cannot expect to resume growth until the second half of 2009’.